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DIGRESSIONS

Okay, so I am not really anti-holiday. Who in the general population doesn’t like booze, food, family, friends, pretty lights, gifts. And booze. Plenty of booze. But when it comes to pollyannaism, nearly every man/woman has his/her limits. So herewith: five justifiable reasons to nurture the Jacob Marley who is secreted away in your soul.

1. No one can agree on what “the holidays” are — and when. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s — when do “the holidays” begin and end? Or do they comprise that whole span of time? (I do not anticipate retailers pushing back on that one.) Forget even this year’s rare “HannukGiving.” For some, “the holidays” seem to begin about two weeks before Halloween when abodes are festooned with all-orange lighting and end with the last dousing of lights on Christmas night and the tossing of forlorn pines on the curb — silvery slivers of tinsel shivering in the wintery wind. Among the more traditional sorts, “the holidays” are Christmas and New Year’s. Hence (little nudge here): “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” These increasingly scarce holiday types deck their halls after December 1 — often well after — and take down the tree sometime between the BCS Championship and the Super Bowl.

2. “The holidays” are at the wrong time of year. Christmas should be a mid-winter holiday celebrated in mid- or late-February, giving us hope in the midst of the gloom. And New Year’s should be March 1 — coinciding with the coming of spring and restoring Oct-ober as the eight month, Nov-ember as the ninth month and Dec-ember as the tenth month of the year. Isn’t it time we toss out the paganism, Saturnalia and Julian calendar of the doomed Romans?

3. Lights. Now here’s a prescription for a good time: sketchy Chinese-made electrical products, bitter cold and tall ladders. And temporariness. Me, if I’m going to all that trouble, those suckers are staying up — lit. nonstop. — foryears.

4. The music. Not even wasting keystrokes on the artistic abortion of “Santa Got Run Over By A Reindeer.” I’m talking about “Walking Through A Winter Wonderland”: My lifetime supply of resistance to this dose of toxicity ran out around age 11. I’m talking “Sleigh Ride” (“just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing / ring-ting-tingle-ing too”). Little children are out there committing acts of vandalism, driven to violent distraction by repeated exposure to this tripe. Boomers: Must the sound of the holidays forever be doused in the amber of the Tin Pan Alley tintinnabulations of our grandparents’ generation and the now-hoary Rankin/Bass animations of own childhoods? Mercy. Let’s disarm.

5. You’re expressly discouraged from lodging a complaint. See, the opprobrium is on me. I wouldn’t be surprised if a grimly cheery reveler in a mangy holiday sweater and precious Christmas-tree broach was looking over my shoulder and is about to come from behind and wrest the keyboard from my…

Like this:

Bassists are arguably the least heralded musicians of rock, pop, funk and soul – more so even than drummers, if that can be believed – yet their work is the very foundation of their genres. Drummers like good bassists like bassists like good drummers. And as any studio producer will tell you, if the rhythm section is tight and at full-tilt, not a whole lot can go wrong.

I have no particular interest here in flash. These basslines, and their players, drove their songs with sinuousness and insistence and struck home with never-ending memorability. These are basslines for the ages; place them in a capsule and shoot them off into space…

BRUCE FOXTON: “DOWN IN THE TUBE STATION AT MIDNIGHT”
Extraordinary box pattern topped with ringing harmonics pull this song out of the station from the very first note, then segue into a great walking pattern in the refrain. Plus…Foxton just flat-out has a stage presence every bassist should have.

JAMES JAMERSON:
“PAPA WAS A ROLLIN’ STONE”
Stark, disciplined minimalism. An eighth-note hi-hat and this simple three-note line – performed by the legendary but unheralded (and usually uncredited) bassist for the Funk Brothers – laid the bottom for the entire song. (See also: “Bernadette”; “Standing in the Shadows of Love.”)

DAVID GILMOUR:
“PIGS (THREE DIFFERENT ONES)”
A rare Gilmour stand-in on bass for Pink Floyd. This is a dark, fretless masterpiece with its tension-filled vibrato, slides, descending hammer-offs and general percolation during the verses.

ROGER WATERS: “MONEY”
Essential. Legend has it Waters devised this bassline not on a bass but on a six-string guitar which is completely to be believed – it’s built around a basic barre chord. Played in 7/4 time then switches to 4/4 in the guitar solo.

TINA WEYMOUTH: “AIR”
This could as easily have been “Psycho Killer,” “Mind,” “Cities,” or “Artists Only,” all of which would be worthy of inclusion here. But this esoterically bouncy bass line is as weightless and feels as effortless as the song’s subject matter itself.

PAUL McCARTNEY: “RAIN”
God, too many choices here to represent the master who forever transformed electric bass. But for one single, signal performance I’m going with this octave-smashing serpent of a deathless bassline and its iconic quarter-notes then ringing triplets in the choruses. (Hear it isolated here.)

TONY LEVIN: “ELEPHANT TALK”
Played not on a bass but on the bass-like Chapman stick, here in one of its very first uses. This is what our forebears might have guessed music in the 21st (let alone late 20th) century would sound like. From 1980 and still ahead of its time.

STING: “THE BED’S TOO BIG WITHOUT YOU”Give the Police credit: They didn’t just play reggae, they internalized it. This warm, snaky bassline is worthy of anything that has come out of Jamaica (mon). See also: “Walking on the Moon”; “Message in a Bottle.”

BOB BABBITT: “BALL OF CONFUSION”
You could play this bassline nearly the world over and get at least 50% recognition. Performed by an unheralded studio musician who also played on “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”; “War”; “Tears of a Clown”; “Mercy Mercy Me”; and “Band of Gold.” Little known fact: He also played on Alice Cooper’s “Go To Hell.”

PAUL SIMONON:
“LONDON CALLING”
Majestic, foreboding opening is a powerful call-to-arms, and the downward-walking quarter notes in the refrain are total ear-candy.

EUGENE WRIGHT: “UNSQUARE DANCE”
This jazz classic from 1961 is most famous for its 7/4 time, but listen to how beautifully the simple standup bassline propels the song with its insistent counterpoint to percussion and piano.

COLIN MOULDING: “ROADS GIRDLE THE GLOBE”
From one of the more unsung of rock bassists. The heaving, breathing opening sounds like something almost organic — like murky asphalt bubbling on a summer day.

BILL WYMAN: “UNDER MY THUMB”
This bassline is so great, it was supplemented with marimba to bring out the immortal slinkiness that carries the song.

JACK WHITE: “SEVEN NATION ARMY”
Can you think of any other bassline that’s so well-known it’s chanted universally at sports events? Neither can I. This is the “We Will Rock You” of basslines.

ADAM CLAYTON:
“TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE”
Look past Bono’s theatrics to hear this powerful bass line propelling an early-’80s hit single. At the beginning of U2’s career, Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen had it going on (musically).

ANTHONY JACKSON:
“FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY”
Whew! Funk at its very best. With the echo at the beginning, then the phaser effect, this one is on the all-time-best list.

TOM HAMILTON:
“SWEET EMOTION”
Guitar-like picking through a box pattern make this song unmistakable from the first stanza.

JOHN DEACON:
“UNDER PRESSURE”
It wasn’t enough that Deacon played the incessant, driving funk of “Another One Bites the Dust.” He also slammed two notes together to create an immortal (and infamously sampled) bassline.

GEDDY LEE:
“YYZ”
Not so much for catchiness as for sheer virtuosity. The brief break with harmonics at about 2:13 still absolutely confounds.

LARRY GRAHAM:
“THANK YOU (FALLETINME BE MICE ELF AGIN)”
Another funk classic: slapping and plucking, over and over and over until this bassline grooves a tunnel in your brain.

JACK BRUCE:
“BADGE”
The slides and syncopated eighth notes in the verses really carry this whole riff, leaving Clapton’s guitar scratches to essentially act as the accompaniment. See also the proto-metal riff of “Sunshine of Your Love.”